


Hunter's Moon

by Wenzel



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Fantasy AU, M/M, hunters and faeries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 07:36:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13336476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wenzel/pseuds/Wenzel
Summary: Keith is a hunter of magical creatures, and his latest target is Shiro. But in a faerie's forest, what power does a mortal really have?Sheith one-shot!





	Hunter's Moon

The dense forest crooned with nervous birds and the lows of does caring for their fawns. Patches of snow huddled under the trees’ leafing branches, hiding from the gleams of spring sunlight. Keith’s leather boots fended off the damp mud and detritus from an autumn past, but it didn’t save him from the numbing cold. He pulled his heavy coat closer around him. His breaths misted in the air.

The maps said the forest ran from the edge of Verine to the bottoms of the Wyvern Reaches, whose sides were barren rock and mud. The life inside the forest sustained both the village peasants of Verine while feeding the needs of the goblins and dark things that lived inside the mountains. The Verinese had spoken of encounters over beer and brandy in the inn.

None personally claimed to have seen the forest creatures. Those sights belonged to strangers or distant relations--even when the speaker used too-familiar terms. It was like they felt that claiming to know the strange folk of the woods and mountains would mean claiming a relationship to the oddly magical. Keith knew they feared drawing attention to forces beyond them. Villagers were always a superstitious lot.

He’d been to a hundred villages and helped with everything from cursed wells, visitors from mirrors, even predators that slunk from the woods to feed on livestock and children. There was little he hadn’t seen. The Verinese had inquired at how  _ young _ he looked, but if he hadn’t been healed so well by potions and spells from priests and other clerics, he’d have looked a half decade older. 

The Verinese feared the most recent creature more than they doubted him. The mayor--barely worthy of the title with his shack and poorly dressed family--had offered him gold and treasures in return for hunting down the spectre. Keith doubted he had any of the jewels or coin to give, but Keith had his reasons for hunting anyway.

If the Verinese descriptions were right, they were being haunted by a Lord of the Hunt.

He was three days into the trek. The underfoot muck left impressions of tracks that lasted for days. The lively forest denizens criss-crossed birds’ feet, fox tracks, even hoof prints over the human footprints he found. The mess distorted the direction and size. He’d found himself puzzling over a set of tracks along the river’s edge, squinting and tracing the tracks with a finger, unsure if it was a Lord’s tracks or a goblin’s. The decision that it had to be a goblin had come from guesswork and chance: the Lords were always large, and the goblin passed as simply human.

The centre of the forest held springs and spritely rivers. Fresh water poured from melting snow caps on the distant mountains. Within the diamond waters, silver fish swam, their thin tails flicking, catching the sunlight and turning it into a rainbow of colour. They were unbothered by the cold, for which Keith envied them. He missed the warm deserts he’d grown up in.

Another pond appeared, surrounded by brush that stopped a few feet away from the pond’s lip. It was a decent watering hole, he thought, though whatever underground currents filled it didn\t bring fish to feed on like the rivers. He slowed, angling toward the strawberry bush empty of fruit. Wiggling into its confines he peered between leaves. The pond’s surrounding grass, spared the thick forest’s canopy-shadow, looked verdant and lush. In summer, the grass would be dappled and the pond catching the brilliant sunlight. It would be a dream to see. In spring, though, it felt almost lacking.

It was one pond of many in the forest. Tracks were all around it, with some even leading straight to it. To keep walking would be foolish. A few hours in the brush, and he might check for other, fresher tracks, but at the moment, the pond was as good as he had. His legs ached besides--days of walking had caught up with him.

From a little pack at his side, he drew dried mashed vegetable sheets. Each square fit into his palm and melted against his tongue. A few were sweet; most were vilely salty, enough to remind him of seaweed. He grimaced through it. He’d eaten worse, he reminded himself. There’d been weeks of living on rodents when he was stranded after his father left--

Branches rustled. Keith froze. No footsteps sounded, but then the Lords were part of their respective forests. Nothing happened without their command, the stories said. The truth was far more pedestrian. The Lords knew their forests as a human knew their home’s floors and walls. If a Lord wished to escape notice, they knew what steps to avoid and what paths to take. It said something about this Lord’s arrogance that he had not only taken on a new forest, but left behind tracks for Keith to follow.

A man stepped out from a blackberry bush. He was… handsome. Keith hated to admit it, but it was true. Muscle rippled under leathers and furs. The Lord was as taller than any human Keith had walked among. Skin as golden as the sun stretched over him, decorated in colourful tattoos as was custom among the Lords of the Forests. He was regal, striking, and strong. 

Yet his body took no pains to hide the Lord’s unearthly origins. A rack of tangled antlers arched from his skull, glistening black like his hair. A patch of snow-white hair hung into his face, directing attention to a strange scar that sliced over his nose--a deliberate affectation, or an injury from a fight? If it was the latter, the Lord had been lucky not to be blinded.

Keith watched as the Lord stretched, as though just awaking from a long nap, and walked to the pond. If the Lord stopped in front of him, he could slip his bow from his shoulder. Would that disturb the bush too much, though? And what of the bowstring’s creak when he drew it, or the sound of the arrow slotting against it? Keith reached for the arrow--

“I know you’re there,” the Lord said. Keith froze. “Your tracks weren’t soft, and you smell of Verine. Are you here to kill me?”

Keith frowned as he stood. Branches caught on his clothes, and he felt several leaves embedded in his hair. “That was the idea,” he replied. If he fired now, he knew the Lord would use his magic to strike Keith down. Even if Keith succeeded in killing the Lord, a single whispered curse as the Lord looked at him would mean decades of agony.

Now, all Keith hoped for was the ability to escape the Lord’s anger.

But the Lord didn’t look infuriated, or even annoyed. His resignation darkened his eyes. “I’ve done nothing to them.”

“Your presence frightens them,” Keith said, shrugging. He looked away from the Lord, as unwise as it was. “They know what the Lords do.”

The Lord sighed. “Not all of us.”

“Enough of you do.” The shadow of the Lord’s antlers fell over Keith who stiffened. “How many villages have fallen because one of you wanted to expand the forests you rule over?”

The Lord’s shadow followed the antlers’. He was far taller than Keith, almost massive; when his hand stretched out and landed on Keith’s shoulder, Keith tried not to flinch. “But you’ve come to hunt me anyway? What made you think you could win--especially in my own lands?”

Keith shrugged again, the weight of the Lord’s hand heavy. “I’ve done it before.” He lifted his chin, looking the Lord in the eyes. If he was going to be cursed for intruding, fine. His line of work had always been risky. “Two of you are dead because of me.”

Instead of anger or distrust, the Lord laughed, low and gentle. “Would they be Lord Sorcha and Lord Galin?”

The names were unfamiliar. “I didn’t know either. One was a woman of vermillion hair; the other was smaller than you, with ram horns.”

“Sorcha and Galin,” the Lord repeated, nodding to himself. “You’re good with that bow. Neither cursed you?”

Was that a veiled threat of what the Lord would do to Keith? “I didn’t give them a chance.” Keith chewed the inside of his cheek. “Are you?” He knew the laws of the forest, and the rights the Lords felt they had. 

“No.” The Lord pulled away from Keith. “I don’t… hurt people like that.” Keith narrowed his eyes. It was too hesitant to be insincere, but it was also against everything he knew about the Lords. Keith didn’t speak, leaving them in a shared silence. “But you can’t leave.”

And there it was. This Lord wasn’t truly different. “Then I’ll have to kill you to escape.”

“I won’t be dying, Hunter. But I won’t kill you either.” The Lord turned away, heading for the woods. “If you try to leave, I’ll know. I’m sorry, but you took away my choice when you killed the others.”

He almost chased the Lord. For all his grand statements, he was still flesh and blood. But Keith didn’t have the element of surprise--not yet. 

Not yet.


End file.
